One Morning Like a Bird (19 page)

    He looks at the other woman, recognises her, though only just, for in all the time he has known Taro, the seven years since they first sat beside each other in Professor Komada’s class, he has seen her no more than three or four times. A woman – today in a pigeon-coloured kimono – in awe of her children, her children’s confident friends. One of the old-style wives, content to kneel at the kitchen door waiting to be told when to bring the sake in. A life lived at the edge of the visible. Yet here she is, sitting on a cushion at the house of Professor Takano and his well-born wife, her hands in her lap, the little movements of her fingers suggesting an embarrassment that moment by moment threatens to crush her.

    Yuji kneels beside Mother.

    ‘Mrs Miyazaki was just telling me about her son,’ she says. ‘It appears that he has volunteered for the army.’

    ‘Taro?’

    ‘Junzo,’ says Mrs Miyazaki. ‘Junzo has gone.’

    He gapes at her. ‘Junzo?’

    ‘He left the house four days ago. I have not seen him since.’

    ‘
Junzo?
But he has exemption. He has his student deferment  . . .’

    ‘Mrs Miyazaki,’ says Mother, ‘was wondering if he had said anything to you.’

    ‘About
this
? No. Nothing.’

    Discreetly, Mrs Miyazaki begins to weep. Haruyo brings in the tea.

    ‘He has not been himself for several weeks,’ says Mrs Miyazaki, dabbing her powdery cheeks with a tissue. ‘His elder brother thinks he might have made an attachment. One that has caused him some unhappiness. Please forgive my rudeness, but you are quite sure there is nothing you can tell me? You are his friend. He would not have done this without a reason, would he?’

    For the first time, Yuji sees something of Junzo in her, something sharp and unexpectedly wilful in her gaze. He turns from her, exchanges a glance with Mother, then looks at Ryuichi, the candlelight playing palely over his face. He cannot take it in. Junzo in the army? Junzo at boot camp? Junzo at the Front with the likes of Captain Mori and Corporal Kitamura? And what is this nonsense she wants him to tell her about? A mystery girlfriend he has never met?

    They sit there in silence, their faces composed as though waiting, with some impatience, for a messenger to arrive. After a minute Yuji makes a sound in his throat, a grunt of irritation. (What is this pigeon-coloured woman doing here, tearing his day in two?) He tells her that he is, regrettably, unable to answer her question. Is it possible there has been a misunderstanding? That Junzo only
spoke
of volunteering without ever intending his words to be taken seriously? He will, however, attempt to investigate. He will try to discover the information he should already possess but somehow does not. He apologises, climbs to his feet.

    ‘There,’ says Mother, her voice like the careful folding of silk. ‘I was sure Yuji would be able to help you.’

    ‘Indeed,’ says Mrs Miyazaki. ‘He has been most kind.’ And she begins again to weep, more loudly this time, crying up tears from her belly as though her second-born, her baby, her brilliant Junzo, was already lost to her. It is unlikely, thinks Yuji, as he slides the doors shut behind him, that such a disturbing sound will be permitted to remain much longer.

5

It takes three days to find Taro. When he has tried all the usual places he goes down to Tokyo Central, to a drinking house in the precincts of the station, a fifteen-seater that specialises in broiled eels and a clear soup of eel livers, and where he knows that some of the junior men from the government offices like to stop for an hour between work and the train ride to the suburbs. Taro is at a table in the corner with four others, all in shirtsleeves. The cook, fanning the charcoal, where a row of skewered eels is sizzling, sees Yuji and barks a welcome. Taro glances up. Yuji raises a hand. He hopes that Taro will leave the table and join him but Taro stays where he is. Yuji takes the seat opposite him. He is introduced. Everyone is perfectly civil but the mood is cool.
They
are from the ministry, servants of the minister, agents, in their humble way, of the Imperial will. He – whoever he is, whatever it is he does – is an outsider. Soon they politely ignore him. When one of them mentions a certain Mr Honda and the others immediately guffaw, no one troubles to explain why Mr Honda is so amusing. Yuji studies the tabletop. After twenty minutes two of the men, draping jackets over their arms, picking up their umbrellas and briefcases, leave for their train. A few minutes later the others go.

    ‘You want to stay here?’ asks Taro.

    ‘Are you expecting more of your colleagues?’

    ‘It’s possible.’

    ‘Mr Honda, perhaps?’

    They move to a coffee shop in a side street near the station. There’s a mural of a Roman temple along one of its walls, and on top of a glass cabinet of
kasutera
sponge cakes, there’s a hand-tinted photograph of Mussolini greeting Hitler or Hitler greeting Mussolini.

    They sit, order from a girl in a beret. Taro puts a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the table in front of him. ‘I suppose Mother has been to your place,’ he says.

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘I hope she was not an inconvenience.’

    ‘She told me about Junzo.’

    ‘Of course.’

    ‘So it’s true?’

    ‘Of course.’

    ‘He volunteered?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘And his student deferment?’

    ‘He
volunteered
.’

    ‘He’s Class D!’

    ‘When someone volunteers,’ says Taro, flatly, as though reading from a sheet of paper, some government prescript, ‘it’s supposed to be an occasion for rejoicing.’

    ‘This is Junzo!’

    ‘Why not Junzo? He has put the nation’s needs before his own. In doing so, he has brought great honour on the family. Once Mother has stopped looking for foolish explanations she will prepare his thousand-stitch belt, and when the moment comes we will go to the station to bid him farewell.’ He stirs his coffee, lights a cigarette. He looks gaunt, exhausted. ‘The country is at war,’ he says.

    ‘You believe Junzo could ever make a soldier?’

    ‘In a soldier, spirit counts for more than stature.’

    ‘So you won’t try to stop him?’

    ‘How can I?’ He volunteered.’

    ‘Isn’t there someone you could speak to? Someone at the ministry?’

    ‘I work in the education department, not the War Ministry.’

    ‘Where is he now?’

    ‘He has a room.’

    ‘A room?’

    ‘In Kagurazaka.’

    ‘You’ve seen him?’

    ‘I have respected his wishes.’

    ‘And his wish is not to see you?’

    ‘He is preparing himself.’

    ‘Preparing?’

    ‘Hardening himself. Visits from an elder brother will not help him.’

    ‘You sound like a character in an Ishihara novel.’

    ‘Far from criticising us,’ says Taro, ‘you might want to study his example. You might even want to imitate it.’

    ‘Eh?’

    ‘Wouldn’t volunteering solve your allowance problem?’

    ‘They would never take me.’

    ‘They took Junzo.’

    ‘Even so  . . .’

    ‘They don’t throw any back these days.’

    ‘My chest  . . .’

    ‘Your chest would benefit greatly from the exercise. That doctor of yours, what’s his name?’

    ‘Kushida.’

    ‘He could write a new letter explaining that in his opinion you are now fit for active service.’

    ‘So what’s stopping
you
from going? You seem so eager for us all to be in uniform  . . .’

    ‘For now I have my work at the ministry. But as a reservist, I can, as you know, be called at any time. When the call comes, I will welcome it.’ He stubs out his cigarette on a picture of Mount Vesuvius in the ashtray. ‘It will be a great relief to me.’

    They look past each other. On the gramophone there is a song in Italian, some swaying, lachrymose love song that the girl in the beret, drying cups, is silently mouthing the words to.

    ‘I saw Feneon,’ says Yuji.

    ‘I suppose they will try to move now.’

    ‘Where could they go?’

    ‘Anywhere.’

    ‘Anywhere? How unconcerned you sound.’

    ‘Was Alissa there?’

    ‘No.’

    ‘I am not unconcerned.’

    ‘Junzo was there before me.’

    ‘He told me.’

    ‘I wondered if Feneon might have said something to him.’

    ‘Suggest he join the army? It’s hardly likely, is it?’ He glances at his watch, counts coins onto the table, pockets his cigarettes and lighter. As they cross the road, a few drops of rain begin to fall, each fat drop hitting the pavement with a noise like something snapping.

    ‘Taking the train?’ asks Taro.

    Yuji shakes his head. ‘I think I’ll go to Asakusa. See a film.’

    ‘Japanese or foreign?’

    ‘I’ll decide when I get there.’

    ‘I couldn’t have stopped him,’ says Taro. ‘You know how he is.’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘Perhaps he’s seen things more clearly than us.’

    ‘And this “attachment”?’

    ‘All of that sort of thing  . . .’ Taro shrugs.

    ‘I know,’ says Yuji. ‘He’s volunteered.’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘The country’s at war.’

    ‘Yes. He will be angry with me, but if you want to see him  so much . . .’ He takes out a pen and writes an address on the back of a business card. ‘Tell him that his family are thinking of him.’

    ‘I will.’

    ‘And don’t take too seriously what I said about you doing the same. I don’t want two of you to worry about.’

    ‘I would not wish to burden you,’ says Yuji. They grin at each other, shyly. ‘Will we meet again soon?’

    ‘Of course.’

    ‘
Au revoir
, then.’

    ‘Yes.
Au revoir
.’

    They walk away from each other, but after twenty strides Yuji stops. Why not persuade Taro to come with him to the cinema? A good film, a bowl of noodles, some beer  . . . They can still do that much, can’t they? He turns and sees his friend crossing the concourse, his broad back, his big shoulders already starting to be rounded by desk work, but before he can follow or call out to him, the crowd opens one of its many doors, and Taro, without a pause, without a moment’s hesitation, steps inside and is lost to sight.

6

He cannot, as he has intended, go straight to Kagurazaka the next morning. Haruyo catches him as he crouches by the vestibule step tying the laces of his shoes, and tells him that Mother’s medication needs collecting from the clinic. He cycles there. Kushida is out on a call but a nurse who recognises Yuji, takes him up to the dispensary on the first floor. ‘Mrs Takano,’ she mutters, ‘Mrs Takano  . . .’ then lifts down a pair of grey canisters from the shelf and passes them to Yuji. She cocks her head. ‘Anything for yourself?’

    She is one of those ominously flirtatious older women who have an appetite for men ten or fifteen years their junior. She reminds him of Mother’s friend, Mrs Sasaki, and of those farcical scenes at her house in Sendagi as she made him try on all the dead husband’s jackets, adjusting the collars for him, smoothing the shoulders, the heavy perfume from the sleeves of her kimono making it difficult to breathe.